On the right is a photo of a Directory for 1937. It contains information for four counties including Essex (usually there is just one county). It’s impressive but rather forbidding. So I’ll start by trying to explain how you can best use directories of many years to find Witham people, together with their dates and their occupations.
A single year’s edition can give you some help, but we have combined and knitted together thirty separate years. Phil Gyford is responsible for the brainwork, and especially for the magic in the next section.
Beforehand, a few points that are worth remembering. To carry out the procedure for other places than Witham, someone would have to compile a different long main list or table. The names in the resulting lists are in alphabetical order of surname, for instance within all the “L”s. The people in directories were mostly the ones with their own businesses or houses. Street numbers were not used until the 1920s. Other names for directories include “Kelly’s directory”, “Trade directory” many of them. Or “historical directory” by modern users.
T0 FIND the NAMES
The names from Witham are hidden away in a very long table. I hope that this first note will help you get to the name you want. To do this:
EITHER: (a) type the surname you are looking for into a search box anywhere in the website.
Suppose you’re looking for Dr Gimson, you’ll type in “Gimson” and the results will include the following entry, with a G at the end:
“People in Witham Directories -1793 to 1937 G”.
If you click on that entry, you will go straight to the part of the table with all the “G”s . They will be presented in alphabetical order within the Gs.
OR: (b) go to the blue alphabet at the top or bottom of the page, click the blue initial which begins the surname you are looking for. Then you’ll see all the entries starting with that same letter, or as many as you get on a very large page. For instance, below is part of the result of a search for the letter “L”
| Publisher | ||
| Kelly | 1882 | Ledger, Wm. coal merchant, Maldon rd |
| Kelly | 1886 | Ledger, William, coal & wine & spirit merchant, Maldon road |
| Kelly | 1933 | Lee, Reginald Herbert, Marlowe, Collingwood road |
| Kelly | 1937 | Lee, Reginald Herbert, Marlowe, Collingwood road |
| Kelly | 1937 | Lees, Stanley Francis, Witham house, High street |
| Kelly | 1870 | Leigh, Herbert, J.P. Avenue house |
| Kelly | 1874 | Leigh, Herbert, J.P. Elm cottage |
| Post Office | 1845 | Lemon, John, farmer, Chipping Hill |
| White | 1848 | Lemon, John, farmer, Elm Farm |
| Pigot | 1823 | Lemon, Samuel, boot and shoe maker |
| Pigot | 1826 | Lemon, Samuel, boot and shoe maker |
| Pigot | 1839 | Lemon, Samuel, boot and shoemaker, Witham |
| Kelly | 1870 | Lennard, H. A. (Mrs.), fancy repository Chipping hill |
| Kelly | 1874 | Lennard, H. A. (Mrs.), fancy repository |
| Kelly | 1878 | Lennard, H. A. (Mrs.), fancy repository |
| Kelly | 1917 | Lenney, David, White Horse P.H |
| Kelly | 1922 | Lenney, David, White Horse P.H. |
| Kelly | 1906 | Lennon, John, supt. County police |
This might seem to have been a complicated procedure, but it’s brief and efficient compared to starting with an individual volume. I’m about to use it myself for an essay about Witham Toown Hall.
To identify someone in all these original directories, would entail taking each of the thirty large volumes, and separating the Witham sections. Then the tricky part would be to identifiy a person in all those sections, and match them up with each other. Virtually impossible.
But the problem has been solved by the two tricks described described at the beginning..